Germanic Languages and Literatures
ANN: NCGS Zoom Seminar with Vance Byrd (University of Pennsylvania, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures): Friday, 8 April 2022
by Kenneth Alarcón Negy
The North Carolina German Studies Seminar and Workshop Series (NCGS), an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional group of scholars in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, cordially invites you to our next online event:
Friday, 8 April 2022 from 3:30-5:30 pm (Eastern Time)
VANCE BYRD (University of Pennsylvania, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures)
The Allied Bombing Raids in Dresden and Panoramic Representation
ABSTRACT: Invented in 1787, the panorama was an attraction that gave audiences around the world the opportunity to immerse themselves in natural and city landscapes as well as bloody battle scenes depicted on larger-than-life circular paintings. After nearly one-hundred years of relative obscurity, panoramas have become popular again in the twenty-first century. Over ten million visitors have seen Yadegar Asisi’s panoramas in Germany and France since 2003. This talk focusses on Asisi’s panoramic representation of Dresden after the allied bombing raids of February 1945, which establishes a debatable comparison to military violence and destruction in Rotterdam, Coventry, Stalingrad, and Warsaw during World War II. The presentation will challenge a universalizing narrative about European trauma and military conflict and ask how exhibition design and site specificity contribute to debates on German victimhood, guilt, and responsibility
BIO: VANCE BYRD is Presidential Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania and a scholar of nineteenth-century German literature. In addition to his first book, A Pedagogy of Observation: Nineteenth-Century Panoramas, German Literature, and Reading Culture, Byrd has co-edited two books and two journal special issues. He is working on a second monograph, Listening to Panoramas: Sonic and Visual Cultures of Commemoration, and a co-edited collection titled Queer Print Cultures.
MODERATION: JAKOB NORBERG (Associate Professor and Chair, Duke University, Department of German Studies)
COMMENT: PAUL JASKOT (Professor, Duke University, Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies)
To get access to the Zoom seminar please contact the NCGS graduate assistants KEVIN J. HOEPER (kjhoeper@live.unc.edu) and KENNETH NEGY (kennethalarconnegy@unc.edu).
NCGS Website: https://ncgsws.web.unc.edu/
NCGS Twitter: https://twitter.com/NCGermanStudies
CONTACT:
Karen Hagemann (Speaker, UNC-Chapel Hill, Department of History), email: hagemann@unc.edu
CONVENERS:
Duke University: Department of German Studies and Department of History
UNC-Chapel Hill: Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures;